If you compliment a cupcake….

To help explain what Diamonds or Dust is about, let me tell you about my thesis.   If you give a human a compliment on their cupcakes, they’ll want to take out a fifty thousand dollar loan and start a cupcake business that will probably fail.

Living in Southern California, I’ve seen a number of boutique cupcake shops open up in nearby malls, but we’re living in a world that is dying from diabetes and obesity.

So how well can a five dollar cupcake really do?  Enough to pay off the loan to purchase the baking equipment, store front redecoration, rent and pay yourself?  Probably not.

In fact, it was probably a very bad business move.

So why did they do it?

Because one day someone offered to make cupcakes for a friend’s birthday party.  And the cupcakes were pretty good, and everyone said so, and then they said, “You could sell these.”  And someone else said, “You should totally sell these, I’d buy them.”  And being ever the American, dollar signs sparkle in their eyes.  A second mortgage later and they have a shop that will never be profitable enough to maintain indefinitely, let alone expand.

If you give a person a polite compliment, you may be doing more harm than good. Giving advice when you have no expertise is worse.

This is a business thesis, but artists are a businesses unto themselves– complete with marketing, product, sales and long hard hours.  Thus putting time and energy into a product that isn’t sell-able can be damaging.

We’re not here to be mean, but to save you from those who are too nice to tell you the truth.